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Balkans
Political communities that are usually included in the Balkans.Barbara Jelavich, '' History of the Balkans'' (2 vol 1983) Political communities that are often included in the Balkans.|image_alt=The Balkan region according to Prof R. J. Crampton |locator_map = |location = Southeastern Europe |area_km2 = 470,000 |highest_mount = Musala (Bulgaria) |elevation_m = 2925 |country = See below |demonym = |population = ca. 55 million }} The Balkans , also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographic area in Southeast Europe with various definitions and meanings, including geopolitical and historical. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria from the Serbian–Bulgarian border to the Black Sea coast. The Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea on the northwest, the Ionian Sea on the southwest, the Aegean Sea in the south and southeast, and the Black Sea on the east and northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined. The highest point of the Balkans is Mount Musala, , in the Rila mountain range, Bulgaria. The concept of the Balkan peninsula was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered the Balkan Mountains the dominant mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. The term of Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for European Turkey in the 19th century, the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire in Southeast Europe. It had a geopolitical rather than a geographical definition, further promoted during the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the early 20th century. The definition of the Balkan peninsula's natural borders do not coincide with the technical definition of a peninsula and hence modern geographers reject the idea of a Balkan peninsula, while scholars usually discuss the Balkans as a region. The term has acquired a stigmatized and pejorative meaning related to the process of Balkanization, and hence the preferred alternative term used for the region is Southeast Europe. Name Etymology The word Balkan comes from Ottoman Turkish 'chain of wooded mountains'; related words are also found in other Turkic languages.Oxford English Dictionary, 2013, [http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/14891 s.v.] The origin of the Turkic word is obscure; it may be related to Persian bālk 'mud', and the Turkish suffix an 'swampy forest'Current Trends in Altaic Linguistics; European Balkan(s), Turkic bal(yk) and the Problem of Their Original Meanings, Marek Stachowski, Jagiellonian University, p. 618. or Persian balā-khāna 'big high house'. Historical names and meaning Classical antiquity and the early Middle Ages From classical antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Balkan Mountains were called by the local Thracian name "Haemus." According to Greek mythology, the Thracian king Haemus was turned into a mountain by Zeus as a punishment and the mountain has remained with his name. A reverse name scheme has also been suggested. D. Dechev considers that Haemus (Αἷμος) is derived from a Thracian word *saimon, 'mountain ridge'. A third possibility is that "Haemus" ( ) derives from the Greek word "haima" ( ) meaning 'blood'. The myth relates to a fight between Zeus and the monster/titan Typhon. Zeus injured Typhon with a thunder bolt and Typhon's blood fell on the mountains, from which they got their name. Late Middle Ages and Ottoman period The earliest mention of the name appears in an early 14th-century Arab map, in which the Haemus mountains are referred to as Balkan. The first attested time the name "Balkan" was used in the West for the mountain range in Bulgaria was in a letter sent in 1490 to Pope Innocent VIII by Buonaccorsi Callimaco, an Italian humanist, writer and diplomat. The Ottomans first mention it in a document dated from 1565. There has been no other documented usage of the word to refer to the region before that, although other Turkic tribes had already settled in or were passing through the region. There is also a claim about an earlier Bulgar Turkic origin of the word popular in Bulgaria, however it is only an unscholarly assertion. The word was used by the Ottomans in Rumelia in its general meaning of mountain, as in Kod̲j̲a-Balkan, Čatal-Balkan, and Ungurus-Balkani̊, but especially it was applied to the Haemus mountain.Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Editors: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill Online Reference Works. The name is still preserved in Central Asia with the Balkan Daglary (Balkan Mountains) and the Balkan Province of Turkmenistan. English traveler John Morritt introduced this term into the English literature at the end of the 18th-century, and other authors started applying the name to the wider area between the Adriatic and the Black Sea. The concept of the "Balkans" was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered it as the dominant central mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. During the 1820s, "Balkan became the preferred although not yet exclusive term alongside Haemus among British travelers... Among Russian travelers not so burdened by classical toponymy, Balkan was the preferred term".Maria Todorova Gutgsell, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford University Press, 2009; ), p. 24. Evolution of meaning in 19th and 20th century The term was not commonly used in geographical literature until the mid-19th century because already then scientists like Carl Ritter warned that only the part South of the Balkan Mountains can be considered as a peninsula and considered it to be renamed as "Greek peninsula". Other prominent geographers who didn't agree with Zeune were Hermann Wagner, Theobald Fischer, Marion Newbigin, Albrecht Penck, while Austrian diplomat Johann Georg von Hahn in 1869 for the same territory used the term Südostereuropäische Halbinsel ("Southeasterneuropean peninsula"). Another reason it was not commonly accepted as the definition of then European Turkey had a similar land extent. However, after the Congress of Berlin (1878) there was a political need for a new term and gradually the Balkans was revitalized, but in the maps the northern border was in Serbia and Montenegro without Greece (it only depicted the Ottoman occupied parts of Europe), while Yugoslavian maps also included Croatia and Bosnia. The term Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for European Turkey, the political borders of former Ottoman Empire provinces. The usage of the term changed in the very end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century when was embraced by Serbian geographers, most prominently by Jovan Cvijić. It was done with political reasoning as affirmation for Serbian nationalism on the whole territory of the South Slavs, and also included anthropological and ethnological studies of the South Slavs through which were claimed various nationalistic and racialist theories. Through such policies and Yugoslavian maps the term was elevated to the modern status of a geographical region. The term acquired political nationalistic connotations far from its initial geographic meaning, arising from political changes from the late 19th century to the creation of post–World War I Yugoslavia (initially the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918). After the dissolution of Yugoslavia beginning in June 1991, the term "Balkans" acquired a negative political meaning, especially in Croatia and Slovenia, as well in worldwide casual usage for war conflicts and fragmentation of a territory (see Balkanization). Southeast Europe In part due to the historical and political connotations of the term "Balkans", especially since the military conflicts of the 1990s in Yugoslavia in the western half of the region, the term "Southeast Europe" is becoming increasingly popular. A European Union initiative of 1999 is called the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, and the online newspaper Balkan Times renamed itself Southeast European Times in 2003. Current In other languages of the region, the region is known as: * Slavic languages: ** Bulgarian and , transliterated: ** ** ** ** * Romance languages: ** * Turkic Languages: ** or Balkanlar * Other languages: ** and ** , transliterated: Definitions and boundaries Balkan Peninsula –Vipava–Krka–Sava–Danube border.]] The Balkan Peninsula is bounded by the Adriatic Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea (including the Ionian and Aegean seas) and the Marmara Sea to the south and the Black Sea to the east. Its northern boundary is often given as the Danube, Sava and Kupa Rivers. The Balkan Peninsula has a combined area of about (slightly smaller than Spain). It is more or less identical to the region known as Southeastern Europe. From 1920 until World War II, Italy included Istria and some Dalmatian areas (like Zara, today's Zadar) that are within the general definition of the Balkan peninsula. The current territory of Italy includes only the small area around Trieste inside the Balkan Peninsula. However, the regions of Trieste and Istria are not usually considered part of the Balkans by Italian geographers, due to their definition of the Balkans that limits its western border to the Kupa River.Istituto Geografico De Agostini, L'Enciclopedia Geografica – Vol.I – Italia, 2004, Ed. De Agostini p.78 Share of total area in brackets) within the Balkan Peninsula by country, by the Danube-Sava definition, with Bulgaria and Greece occupying almost the half of the territory of the Balkan Peninsula, with around 23% of the total area eachEntirely within the Balkan peninsula: * : 28,749 km2 (100% of total land) * : 51,180 km2 (100%) * : 110,993.6 / according to other sources 111,002 km2data.un.org/en/iso/bg.html(100%) * : 10,908 km2 (100%) * : 13,810 km2 (100%) * : 25,710 km2 (100%) Mostly or partially within the Balkan peninsula: * (southern mainland): 24,013 km2 (46%) Geographical horizon (Scientific and Professional magazine of the Croatian Geographical Society), article; On the north border and confine of the Balkan Peninsula, No1/2008, year LIV, ISSN 0016-7266, p.30-33 * (mainland): 110,496 km2 (83.7%)/ according to other sources 106,247 km2 (80,5%)/ 126,023 km2 including islands adjacent to the Balkan Peninsula (95,5%) * (Trieste and Monfalcone): 200 km2 (0.1%) * (mainland Dobruja): 11,000 km2 (5%) * (Central Serbia) 51,000 km2 (65%) * (southwestern part): 5,000 km2 (25%) * (European part): 22,764 km2 (3%) Balkans The term "the Balkans" is used more generally for the region; it includes states in the region, which may extend beyond the peninsula, and is not defined by the geography of the peninsula itself. Historians state the Balkans comprise Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo , Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia.The standard scholarly histories of the Balkans include Romania. Barbara Jelavich, History of the Balkans (2 vol 1983); L.S. Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453 (2000); John R. Lampe, '' Balkan Economic History, 1550-1950: From Imperial Borderlands to Developing Nations'' (Indiana University Press, (1982); Andrew Baruch Wachtel, The Balkans in World History (New Oxford World History) (2008); Stevan K. Pavlowitch, A History of the Balkans 1804-1945 (Routledge, 2014). According to an earlier version of the Britannica, cited in Crampton, The Balkans Since the Second World War, the Balkans comprise "the territory of the states of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Slovenia and Yugoslavia (Montenegro and Serbia)", and also "the European portion of Turkey"; noting that Turkey is not a Balkan state and that the inclusion of Slovenia and the Transylvanian part of Romania in the region is dubious. Its total area is usually given as and the population as 59,297,000 (est. 2002). Italy, although having a small part of its territory in the Balkan peninsula, is not included in the term "the Balkans". The term Southeastern Europe is also used for the region, with various definitions. Individual Balkan states can also be considered part of other regions, including Southern Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Europe. Turkey, often including its European territory, is also included in Western or Southwestern Asia. Criticism of the geographical definition The term is criticized for having a geopolitical, rather than a geographical meaning and definition, as a multiethnic and political area in the southeastern part of Europe. The geographical term of a peninsula defines that the water border must be longer than land, with the land side being the shortest in the triangle, but that is not the case with the Balkan Peninsula. Both Eastern and Western water cathetus from Odessa to Cape Matapan (ca. 1230–1350 km) and from Trieste to Cape Matapan (ca. 1270–1285 km) are shorter than land cathetus from Trieste to Odessa (ca. 1330–1365 km). The land has a too wide line connected to the continent to be technically proclaimed as a peninsula - Szczecin (920 km) and Rostock (950 km) at the Baltic Sea are closer to Trieste than Odessa yet it is not considered as another European peninsula. Since the late 19th and early 20th-century literature is not known where is exactly the northern border between the peninsula and the continent, with an issue, whether the rivers are suitable for its definition. In the studies the Balkans natural borders, especially the northern border, are often avoided to be addressed, considered as a "fastidious problem" by André Blanc in Geography of the Balkans (1965), while John Lampe and Marvin Jackman in Balkan Economic History (1971) noted that "modern geographers seem agreed in rejecting the old idea of a Balkan Peninsula". Another issue is the name because the Balkan Mountains which are mostly located in Northern Bulgaria are not dominating the region by length and area like the Dinaric Alps. An eventual Balkan peninsula can be considered a territory South of the Balkan Mountains, with a possible name "Greek-Albanian Peninsula", but Greece is rarely defined as a Balkan nation both geographically and in international relations. The term influenced the meaning of Southeast Europe which again is not properly defined by geographical factors yet historical borders of the Balkans. Croatian geographers and academics are highly critical of inclusion of Croatia within the broad geographical, social-political and historical context of the Balkans, while the neologism Western Balkans is perceived as a humiliation of Croatia by the European political powers. According to M. S. Altić, the term has two different meanings, "geographical, ultimately undefined, and cultural, extremely negative, and recently strongly motivated by the contemporary political context". In 2018, President of Croatia Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović stated that the use of the term "Western Balkans" should be avoided because it doesn't imply only a geographic area, but also negative connotations, and instead must be perceived as and called Southeast Europe because it is part of Europe. References Further reading * * * * * Carter, Francis W., ed. An Historical Geography of the Balkans Academic Press, 1977. * Dvornik, Francis. The Slavs in European History and Civilization Rutgers University Press, 1962. * Fine, John V. A., Jr. The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century 1983; The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987. * Forbes, Nevill. The Balkans: A History of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Rumania, Turkey '' (Clarendon Press, 1915) online * * * * * Lampe, John R., and Marvin R. Jackson; ''Balkan Economic History, 1550–1950: From Imperial Borderlands to Developing Nations Indiana University Press, 1982 * Király, Béla K., ed. East Central European Society in the Era of Revolutions, 1775–1856. 1984 * * * * online free to borrow * * Zametica, John. Folly and malice: the Habsburg empire, the Balkans and the start of World War One (London: Shepheard–Walwyn, 2017). 416pp. External links * Balkan Insight – Analysis from Balkans * Balkanalysis, in-depth research on Balkan geopolitics * Western Balkans Photo impression *Shared Pasts in Central and Southeast Europe, 17th–21st Centuries. Eds. Category:Balkans Category:Geography of Southeastern Europe Category:Peninsulas of Europe Category:Regions of Europe Category:Southeastern Europe Category:Turkish words and phrases